FORTY years ago this summer, the Democrats met in Atlantic City and put on a televised spectacle that helped shape the politics of the day and the long-range effects of the civil rights movement. The clash over whether the national party would seat...

July 25, 2004, Sunday

To millions of Americans, Richard Milhous Nixon was the most puzzling and fascinating politician of his time. He was a man of high intelligence and innovative concepts whose talents, especially in international affairs, were widely respected by both...

April 24, 1994, Sunday

LEAD: AS viewed from city halls across the nation, the government of New York City is like something from another planet. Who ever heard of a single municipality that is also five counties? What is a borough president? And what strange thing is a...

March 26, 1989, Sunday

LEAD: WHILE controversy continued last week over the propriety of the conduct of Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d and House Speaker Jim Wright, the Federal Bureau of Investigation disclosed that it was conducting a wide bribery investigation aimed at...

June 19, 1988, Sunday

LEAD: ''TELL about the South. What's it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all,'' asked a Harvard student in William Faulkner's ''Absalom, Absalom!'' questioning his Mississippi roommate about the enigmas...

June 10, 1987, Wednesday

LEAD: Fierce competition for economic development is bringing about a new era in housing for low-income people as states and cities around the country forge far ahead of Washington in finding new approaches.

May 20, 1987, Wednesday

LEAD: A group of poor blacks, the City of Dallas and the Reagan Administration have agreed, with the approval of a Federal district judge, that 2,600 public housing units in the city's most infamous slum should be destroyed and that many of the...

April 28, 1987, Tuesday

LEAD: Officials around the nation are concerned that over the next decade more than half a million low- and moderate-income families may be ousted from federally subsidized apartments built in the 1960's and 1970's. Hundreds of families already have...